It took thirteen years to reach this week—but we did it. You did it.
Fair maps are here.
The long, dark night of Wisconsin’s partisan ultra-gerrymander is, at long last, over.
The new maps signed into law by Governor Evers on Monday score an “A” from the Princeton Gerrymandering Project—instead of an F, like the old maps. If Democratic candidates for state legislature do as well this fall as Governor Evers did in 2022, the Assembly will have a Democratic majority, and we’ll flip four Senate seats—putting us on track to win the Senate majority in 2026.
And if, instead, Republicans get more votes than Democrats, then it’s Republicans who will have the majority. That’s as it should be. The goal, all along, has been fair maps. And that’s what we’ve got.
Under the old maps, the Election Integrity Project at Harvard called Wisconsin a “democracy desert.” Now, the correct term is simpler: it’s a democracy.
This has been a long, hard fight. If you’re reading this post, you’ve probably been involved for much or all of it.
In case you need a refresher on how bad it was and how far we’ve come, check out this clip from Rachel Maddow on Monday describing what an absolutely huge deal this truly is:
On Monday night, I joined Lawrence O’Donnell to celebrate the victory—and talk about how much perseverance and focus, year in and year out, it took to make this moment possible:
On Monday, I sent out an email to our supporter list that summed up my feelings about all this. I’ll take the liberty of quoting it here:
Wisconsin’s gerrymandering crisis began in 2011, when Republican lawmakers—bound in secrecy by nondisclosure agreements as they worked with operatives at a lobbying firm—drew legislative lines that guaranteed that even landslide election losses wouldn’t cost them their majorities. The result was one of the most egregious, extreme partisan gerrymanders in American political history.
In 2012, and again in 2018, Wisconsin voters overwhelmingly voted for Democratic majorities in the state legislature—but Republicans won huge majorities of the seats. In 2020 and 2022, Democrats won major statewide victories, but Republicans won near-supermajorities.
All the while, Republican politicians in Wisconsin have used their power to take more power away from the people of our state—restricting access to the ballot, removing authorities that voters had entrusted to statewide elected officials like the Governor and Attorney General, and smashing the freedoms of workers to organize and advocate for themselves. For thirteen years, the democracy-proof legislature has been laying siege to democracy itself.
But those statewide victories added up. In 2018, 2020, and 2023, voters built a new progressive majority on the State Supreme Court. By electing Governor Evers and preventing GOP supermajorities, they stopped hard-right maps from being signed into law. And last year, a civic uprising prevented Republicans from impeaching Janet Protasiewicz. In December, the Supreme Court ruled that Wisconsin’s legislative maps were unconstitutional. Every one of those fights was a necessary step towards this moment. And now, a fair set of maps is the law of the land.
This wasn’t easy. You had to keep the faith. You had to knock on doors, call phones, chip in, share your views with friends and online—year after year, in election after election, never giving up, even when it felt like all was lost.
But you did it.
Today, the work doesn’t end. Far from it. The candidate recruitment process now goes into overdrive. And at the same time, we remain vigilant in case Republican politicians in Madison and their allies once again, through the courts or any other strategy, attempt to thwart majority rule.
Today, we commit. To doing the work. To ending the malign speakership of Robin Vos. To breaking the GOP supermajority in the State Senate — and paving the way towards a Democratic state Senate majority in 2026. To doing everything in our power to, at long last, translate the will of the people of Wisconsin into the law of the land.
This is a story with millions of heroes. You’re one of them. From all of us at the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, please know you have our boundless gratitude.
The future of Forward starts now.